Breathtaking Loch Ness fireball meteor lights up night sky in 'once in a lifetime' picture

• 13:20, 16 March 2015
• By David Raven

When tourist guide John Alasdair Macdonald snapped a landscape shot across the lake he accidentally captured a giant shooting star

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The Hebridean Explorer

Spectacular: The meteor captured over Loch Ness by tour guide John Macdonald

This spectacular picture shows the 'fluke' moment a fireball meteor was pictured soaring over the Loch Ness last night.
Gobsmacked John Macdonald, 42, went for a walk at 9pm when he snapped the rare sight lighting up the sky.
The meteor was so bright it would have terrified Nessie and even caused panicked locals to phone the coastguard after mistaking it for a distress flare.

The Hebridean Explorer

Marvel: It was John's first shooting star

John, a tour guide who lives near the lake, snapped the 30-second long exposure picture with a standard Sony RX100 compact camera.
He told Mirror Online: "We had really good weather in the Highlands over the past few days so the sky was clear all weekend.

"I decided to pop down to get some pictures for my website and set up my camera for a 30-second long exposure.
"Before last night I had never seen a shooting star so I was completely stunned when it happened."

Giant fireball meteors - or shooting stars - are rarely seen so to capture one on camera is an incredible feat.
John added: "It's a once in a lifetime thing, I think I was just extremely lucky and for it to take place in the middle of the picture as well - it was just the perfect picture."

Have you ever seen a shooting star?

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Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons of sand-sized particles each day, creating thousands of meteors, with many of them lighting up the night sky.
Occasionally larger objects plummet down from the sky and create a fireball meteor, but most of them burn up before hitting the ground.